Wasted Years
by SamiCausti
Summary: Natasha didn't kill Clint, all those years ago when he first started trailing her. And when SHIELD sent him to kill the redheaded spy causing trouble, he purposely missed the shot. But what if she'd gone with her instincts and training and knocked out the liability? What if he'd followed orders? Two one-shots, AU, Clint/Natasha shipping. Credit for the Clint story goes to Waggy!
1. Chapter 1

She shoved her red hair out of her face with one hand and tossed back another shot of vodka. It had been a long time since she'd gotten really drunk. She had a very high tolerance for alcohol and she knew her limits. Tonight, though, she was hoping for mind-numbing inebriation. Chekov was dead. She should be pleased about that. The last piece in a revenge she'd been chasing for a decade. She swallowed another shot, welcoming the pain as it burned its way down her throat.

_She should've known. Guessed, at least. She knew better than to trust people, didn't she? That had been the overarching moral of her entire life. Trust left people dead. Defenseless and vulnerable and very dead. If anyone should know that, it was Natasha Romanoff. The Black Widow. She'd been making a name for herself almost as long as she could remember. They'd given her the name, yes, but she'd taken it as a personal challenge to live up to it. She should've remembered that, given it a second thought when a certain blue-eyed archer and come on the scene – but hell, he was entertaining. Talented. Damn stubborn. And, of course, just a little bit gorgeous. And more of a threat out of sight than he was close up._

"Everyone dies in the end," she muttered. Her motor skills were still intact, she could still see straight, and she sure as hell wasn't having any trouble thinking. Long habit forced her to glance around the dim room before she reached for the bottle again. It had been in a room like this – small, bare, the Russian snow outside turned into grey slush by the traffic and pedestrians. So many years ago.

_She shifted her grip on the knife's handle and took a deep breath, leaning farther back into the shadows of the hotel room. Decent hotel, really – much nicer than some places they'd stayed in. Discreet, out of the way, convenient… exactly the kind of place to hole up in for a while between jobs. Exactly the kind of place to kill a partner in. On second thought, maybe she didn't need to be the one thinking twice. Maybe Clint should've been giving it all some serious consideration – hell, what kind of man willingly joined up with a woman with _widow_ in her name? _A crazy one._ Crazy didn't work well in this line of work. Crazy and trust – neither of them. They both got you killed. _Same as talking to a guy like Chekov in public._ She didn't know what the archer was thinking, associating with a guy like that where she could see, but it was a fatal mistake. She didn't like being sold out and she hated Chekov, and the two weren't a nice combination._

It had been years of waiting before she'd had this chance to get at Chekov. She'd been trying since the day he'd left her nearly dead on the rooftop of his casino. Just another man who'd used her and didn't want to pay for the skills he could never acquire himself in a million years. She'd sworn she'd take him down, make him pay up.

"You're lucky I'm not finishing you off here, Widow," he'd said before walking away. "That's all the payment you'll get from me. I'd say_ thank you _if I were you." She'd tried to leap at him then, but her body couldn't move. He'd laughed at her brokenness.

"I'll be back for my pay, Chekov," she'd hissed at his retreating form. "And I'm charging interest." And she had, too. A decade later, yes, but oh, revenge had been sweet. Until that end, until he'd suddenly twisted his mouth into some semblance of a smile despite the agony through which she was systematically putting him.

"When are you collecting the interest you talked about, Widow?" She could've sworn he was trying to laugh. "Or did you already get that from your partner?" The Black Widow had no partner. She was independent, self-sufficient. She didn't have time to wait for someone to tag along and hell if she needed someone to cover her back. She could do that well enough. She was alive still, wasn't she? "Oh yes. I was watching you. Your archer friend – did you enjoy watching him die?"

_The doorknob turned, and she tensed, poised, one last quick glance around the room before her green eyes locked on the crack between the door and the frame where Clint's head would appear. The door swung open and she didn't wait to see the target enter. She knew exactly the height of his head, and she'd seen him walk into so many rooms over the past year – she didn't have to wait. She flung the knife at the growing space between door and frame. _Goodbye, Hawkeye. You betrayed the wrong woman…

She held the glass up and stared at the vodka for a few moments before putting it to her mouth. With Chekov dead she was supposed to feel better. The man had been a nightmare. She was supposed to feel victorious and satisfied. She was _not _supposed to be sitting cross-legged on an old bed in a rundown Moscow apartment with an entire arsenal of vodka and full intentions of drinking all of it.

"Did you ask him what he said to me?" Chekov asked before she finished killing him. "Did you give him time to swear he was innocent?" She slammed her boot into his face and didn't give him the satisfaction of an answer. His gasps of pain were mixed with a sound that might have been mocking laughter. "Did you ask what he told me?" She didn't speak. Didn't even look at him. "He asked me for directions." The gasping was unmistakably laughter now – a dying wheeze she'd heard hundreds of times. Now it seemed to be attacking her personally, sneering at her for even caring that she could remember the archer and the days she'd killed him.

_There was no familiar sound of knife hitting its fleshy target, the familiar gasping gurgle of a man's life rapidly trickling out. The door flew open and Clint stormed in. Typical Clint, of course – no sign of the sane caution anyone else would exercise when entering a room outside of which their life could've ended only moments before. That was Clint – always leaping into the fray without really looking. Those blue eyes darted around the room just long enough to realize she was the only one there, and she could see, almost in slow motion, the process of recognition as he placed her, placed the knife, put two and two together and came up with the certainty that she'd been aiming for him. He leapt across the room. He was quick – she'd give him that much. Fine. If he wanted to fight it out, she'd go his way. She'd had him in kill position so many times – this time she'd follow through._

_"Damn you, what did you think, that I wouldn't see you? That I trusted you?" He had no chance against her and they both knew it. It was only a matter of moments before she killed him. The hardest thing? Getting rid of the body. And even at that she had years of practice. "To play this game you gotta be ruthless, Clint. You're getting there, but if you think you've learnt that lesson, let me show you how much further you have to go."_

She'd beaten the hell out of him before finishing him off. He'd sworn he was innocent. Sworn he didn't know who Chekov was. Sworn he _loved _her. That faerie-tale myth seemed to be his favourite defense. As if she believed it. As if him being some kind of crazy idealist meant he couldn't possibly betray her. Chekov seemed to know that, too, letting out cries of pain, gasps, groans, all intermingled with that pained laughter.

"He thought I was a pedestrian. Asked for directions." She broke his foot, slowly, deliberately, listening to each tiny bone crack as his face contorted with pain. "He never betrayed you once. Did he ever know why he died? Did killing him make you feel safer, Widow?" She kicked him backwards, crushed his trachea, and walked away while the he was still letting out the sickening sounds of death.

The vodka wasn't helping. She hadn't thought about Clint Barton in years, but suddenly she couldn't stop the memories. Clint humming as he held her in his arms in the darkness. Clint's smirk when he made a shot she hadn't believed he could. Clint's eyes, that pain and…pity? Was that what it had been? Damn the man, he'd _pitied _her as she'd killed him. He'd been stupid, yes. Chased her down. Never seemed to actually fear her. Believed in insane things like love and loyalty and people having some kind of potential for goodness. But for all that he'd been a damn good partner. _Damn good partners don't betray each other._ She swallowed another shot of vodka, licked the drops off the mouth of the empty bottle, and reached for the next one. Blue eyes she'd closed forever danced in front of her in the shadows and Chekov's mockery echoed in her mind. _Who betrayed who, Romanoff?_


	2. Chapter 2

The ship was moving quickly – headed to Cuba or something like that, and apparently on a deadline. Clint could see the waves that it left behind in the moonlight, swelling and then fading back into the water. There were motors somewhere down there. Some kind of huge propeller had to move the carrier along, right? That's how ships worked. Of course, this ship also flew, but that was beside the point.

_Can you fly, Barton? _Probably not. The logical answer was a straight 'no', but he had never actually tried. There had been times when he had been tempted – extremely tempted – to give it a shot and see what happened. It had almost always been Coulson that had strongly discouraged the idea, and it was always him still, since he'd figured out that the younger agent wouldn't listen to anyone else.

He had been an official agent for at least four years now and was unofficially the best marksman the organization had. To the other agents, he was the bizarre archer who would joke over the comms no matter what the job was, never took anything seriously, and always made his shots anyway. To his handler, he was a 'risk to himself', as the file had read – it was supposedly a closed file, but Clint had found it very easy to open after he had picked the lock to the cabinet – and was under observation until it could be determined whether or not a professional opinion was needed. No one else had seen the reasoning behind that statement. No one else needed to.

It had been about three years since he had completed his first real job – his first solo elimination. Before that it had been all spotting and watching other agents. Then the file had come in and Coulson had snatched it up. He hadseemed as eager as Clint to get the archer a chance to prove himself, and he'dhad no way of knowing why Clint had gone through the entire file without his usual confident grin. A simple takedown; that's all it was. One shot, one arrow, let the agents on the ground take care of the body. That's all it had been. Never mindhow the green eyes had turned in his direction right before he loosed that arrow, as if she _knew _he was there and knew she couldn't do a thing about it.

_She left you, Barton. She deserted you, just like she promised she would. _His own voice still echoed in his head sometimes, screaming the woman's name while being ushered out the door by at least six SHIELD agents. Natasha hadleft. Hehad known all along she would. He hadn't quite believed it until he was in the back of a black car with absolutely no sign that she would even bother looking into what happened. Besides, she was a risk to the agency that had given him a second shot at life. A risk to everyone that crossed her path. It had been fully justified. Technically, she wouldn't have even known who took the shot. One arrow through the temple. No time to wonder where it had come from. It had been the perfect shot, he had been told. An excellent job for his first one alone.

It had taken out the first person he'd trusted since he left the circus. It had proven that he could take out anyone, no matter what history there was with them. It had proven he was an excellent killer.

Coulson was the only person that knew what was happening to the archer. He didn't know the reason – hell, Clint didn't even know the reason – but he could see it. All the other agents saw was a guy who enjoyed disregarding rules and was sent to talk to Fury more often than some of his advisors. It would stay that way if Clint had anything to say about it. He had tried to keep Coulson out of it, too, but his handler was too perceptive for that sort of deception. The agent was the only one who actually knew about the majority of Clint's history – his father, the circus, Barney – and he was the one who had initially convinced Fury that a nineteen-year-old kid deserved a second chance.

It was quiet on the deck. Logical, considering it was almost two in the morning; the right timing found moments of peace and solitude, something desperately needed after spending hours training with a crowd in the gym. The water rushing along behind the ship looked pitch black, with ripples of moonlight swirled in, and he vaguely wondered how cold it was. Clint had never learned to swim – not well, anyway. He could tread water decently, but just inhaling the water once would make someone sink faster…

Clint turned his gaze to the moon for a while, squinting a little at the sudden bright light in his eyes. It had been years since he had killed Natasha. There had been countless jobs since then. There wasnever any shortage of nasty people in the world. Coulson always made sure his hits were ones on men that very _obviously_ deserved of an arrow in the head. No women. No children. No one who had an iffy case. The rules had been established quickly and Coulson was good at sticking to them. He was the first person to actually care since Barney died. He remained the only one. He was a good handler, a good man…and extremely good at reading people.

"Barton, back up." Clint looked back down at the water. The toes of his boots were actually a few millimeters over the metal edge of the ship. The older agent was probably about forty feet back and not quite fast enough to close that distance in the time it took to make a decision. They both knew it. Coulson knew how far back he could stand; he had practice with it by now.

"Is that an order, sir?" It went silent and he considered the foaming ripples left in the ship's wake. It was probably cold. Probably seize right up immediately after submerging the first time. Might make it harder to take that first breath, but it was still doable…

"If that's what it takes, yes." It would be easy, really. A little too easy. He was the one that found the most difficult means of doing something and pulled it off anyway. That was probably why Coulson was the only one with reason to keep an eye on the archer; no one else would expect a guy like him to look for something easy.

_You killed her, Barton._

It was a job. He had followed orders. That was all.

_You killed her just because someone told you to._

The people he killed were dangerous. Natasha had been dangerous.

_It's no better than what you did before. You think it's a second chance? They just want your skillset. That's all._

"Clint." He blinked once – seemed like the first time in a few minutes – and straightened a little. "Clint, back up." It seemed like half an eternity before the young man found his feet moving, turning back toward the center of the deck and toward the agent who stood with his usual suit even at two in the morning. His face was unreadable as always, but his eyes looked more resigned than usual. _What would you do if I didn't back up, Phil? _He felt a hand on his shoulder before he even realized he was close enough to reach. His handler fell in step beside him, using the shoulder to steer him toward the main door. _Would you stop me if I didn't back up?_

These days, he couldn't really tell if he wanted to be ordered back anymore.


End file.
